Are you trying to find the perfect standards based gradebook? I have been working to implement a standards based grading system in my high school science classes but I was limited by the school’s learning management system. I figured out some ways to hack the system so that it was more compatible with standards based grading rather than a traditional grading system. Today, I want to share these hacks with you in hopes you can set up your own standards based gradebook that works for you!

Before we jump in, if you are looking to start standards based grading in your high school classroom, then I may have just the right thing for you! Get started on your standards based grading journey with my free guidebook that outlines how to implement standards based grading in your high school classroom. I will walk you step by step as you set up your standards based grading system. Become a standards based grading rockstar today!

Why I switched to standards based grading

Standards based grading (SBG) is a shift in education to focus on student learning. With SBG, a teacher divides the content into standards that students should master by the end of the course. A teacher tracks student learning so that they can provide mastery-oriented feedback to students to help improve their learning.

The problem I was finding with traditional grading systems is that students became good at “playing the game of school”. My students knew how to easily earn points to achieve high grades. They would cheat their way through assignments or cram for a test to “get a good grade”. But true learning was never actually taking place. They could not retain information after a test or even after taking the course.

Reflecting on my past experiences, I knew I wanted to make a change in my grading system. I no longer wanted students to “play the game of school”. They play this game to get a good grade if it meant they were not actually learning anything. That is when I started researching all about mastery learning and standards based grading.

I wanted my grades to be a true reflection of a student’s mastery of the standards for the course. This would mean that I was no longer grading individual assignments but rather grading per standard. This change is something that I would need to reflect in my gradebook. However, the learning management system we currently use for online grading presents a huge roadblock with standards based grading.

Our school uses an online gradebook that aligns with a traditional grading. It allows you to create assignments that have one grade associated with them. I assign each category of assignment a different weight. Then the gradebook averages the grades on the different assignments into one single grade for the course.

But the problem with this gradebook is that it is not conducive to standards based grading. If grades are tied to standards rather than assignments, I found that I needed to hack my way through the setup of the gradebook to make it more standards based.

If you have found the same trouble when it comes to your own standards based gradebook, I want to share the 5 hacks I have used to make my traditional gradebook more standards based.

Hack #1:  Add each standard as an assignment

One of the biggest limitations of a traditional gradebook is that grades are tied to assignments rather than to standards. The first hack I want to share with you is how to set up the gradebook so that grades will be per standard, not per assignment.

In this case, you will want to use one single assignment for each standard. If your course has 10 standards, then you will create 10 assignments in your gradebook. You will want to name each assignment with the name of your standard.

Whenever you assess a student on a standard, you will update their level of mastery on that standard. If you assess a student on that standard a second time, you could then just replace their score with their most recent level of mastery.

However, I give students multiple opportunities to demonstrate growth on a standard. It is often beneficial to show students their multiple attempts on a standard. In the setup described above, you would replace each attempt at mastery with the most recent. Therefore, a student will not see their growth over time.

To work around this there are a few different options. The first option is the simplest. Instead of having just one assignment created per standard, you could create a new assignment for each attempt on a standard. For example, you create an assignment for standard 1 – attempt 1 and then another assignment for standard 1 – attempt 2. 

I tried to use this method with my online gradebook but it became overwhelming for both me and the students. It was a particular problem for students because on their end of the gradebook, all their grades are provided in one vertical list. They could not see growth very easily in this setup. For myself, the gradebook became overwhelming because I had so many attempts for each standard that it just became messy.

The second option, and what I believe to be the better option, is to use a spreadsheet gradebook. The spreadsheet clearly displays attempts at mastery per standard which you can then copy into your learning management system. At our school, we are required contractually to enter grades into our LMS every two weeks. So by using the spreadsheet method, I still need to enter grades into the online gradebook. For this, I just input the most recent attempt at mastery per standard, rather than each attempt. My spreadsheet tracks the growth of each standard.

Hack #2: Create a standards based report card template that can be shared with individual students

My master spreadsheet that I use as my true standards based gradebook, I can easily track student growth across each standard. As I mentioned earlier, in our actual online gradebook, I will only enter the most recent level of mastery based. This is to avoid cluttering the gradebook.

Therefore, I still need a way to share all the attempts with students. I have my spreadsheet gradebook set up so that it will generate individual student standards based report cards. This report card will show the attempts at mastery per standard. It will also generate a letter grade based on their most recent levels of mastery.

I use the letter grade to communicate their overall understanding in a way that is meaningful to students and parents. Oftentimes with standards based grades, students are not able to analyze their progress when they only see scores like 4s, 3s, 2s, and 1s. And because I am still using a traditional gradebook, the school requires me to enter one number/letter grade for each student in the course at the end of the term.

So effectively I am not doing true standards based grading since I am converting the standards based grades into one single number. But until our school were to make the shift to a full standards based report card that only reports mastery levels per standard rather than a course grade, this is the best system I can come up with.

Hack #3: Use words or symbols in place of numbers in your standards based gradebook

With standards based grading, the grades are tied to assessments of the standards. That means a lot of the classwork and homework that we give our students is not a true assessment of a student’s mastery. 

Students complete classwork and homework with the ability to look up answers in their notes, online, or by talking to a friend. Because these are not true assessments of knowledge, I do not count them in my standards based gradebook. They are meant to be more formative as these assignments help students achieve higher levels of understanding.

But the question becomes, if I do not grade the work for mastery, then how do I grade them to ensure students complete the work? 

In my online gradebook, I create a separate category called tasks. Tasks are reserved for classwork, homework, and other activities that students complete as practice to help students understand a standard. I do not want these to count towards their grade but I do want to report on a student’s completion of the tasks. So if there is a task to “grade” I will create a new assignment for it in my online gradebook. I will categorize it as a task. When it comes to its grade, I use words rather than numbers.

You will have to see if your online LMS will allow you to use words or symbols rather than numbers. In our LMS there is a section in the gradebook preferences for “grading symbols”. There we can use up to 7 characters to create words to use in place of number grades. For example, this traditionally is used to equate the symbol “A” with a grade of 95. 

But in our case, we are hacking the system to make it easier to report to students and parents the completion of work. Because tasks are practice, I grade these assignments for completion. I often use class time to go over answers so students should have corrected their work anyway. So there is no reason I would be grading this work based on mastery.

In the gradebook, anything that is a task will receive grades such as “Done”, “Missing”, or “INC” (incomplete). Students will be able to look at all their tasks and immediately see what work they still need to do. Parents can also look at this to get a sense of their students’ work completion. 

Also, this allows for better conversation around grades. Again, students complete tasks for practice to achieve higher levels of mastery. If a student continuously receives scores of missing or incomplete and they are stuck on the approaching or not meeting mastery level, then there is probably a correlation.

Hack #4: Enter a preliminary grade using the standards based grading calculator

Because my school is not a standards based grading school, my school contractually requires me to give students letter/number grades at the end of a grading period. 

So while I can hack the online grading portal, I still need a method to assign students a letter grade at the end of each term. For that, I come up with the hack of a “preliminary grade”.

In the past, I would use only standards based grades, and then at the very end of the grading period, I would assign a letter grade for each student. But because students have a hard time equating standards based grades to traditional letter grades, they were often surprised (not in a good way) about their letter grades.

So now I keep one assignment in the gradebook called a “preliminary grade”. I use the preliminary grade to communicate with students and parents about the student’s progress in the class.

I have come up with a system for converting standards based grades into letter grades. It is similar to GPA in a way. I take the overall level of understanding (4, 3, 2, 1) across each standard and I average each standard together into one standards based score. For example, let’s say that I have assessed a student who has mastered standard #1 (level 4), meets standard #2 (level 3) and has mastered standard #3 (level 4). I would average level 4, level 3, and level 4 together. This equals a standards based score of 3.67. Using my scale, I equate this standards based score to an A.

I update the preliminary grade weekly in the online grading portal. The gradebook automatically calculates this number for me in my standards based gradebook spreadsheet. This number also appears on each student’s individual grade report spreadsheet that is shared with them. This makes it easier to have conversations with students about their progress in class. 

Hack #5: Weight standard and task grades to 0

In my school’s online grading portal there are three major categories of grades: tasks, standards, and the preliminary grade. The tasks communicate the completion of work and I grade them using words. The standards are to report the levels of mastery a student has earned for each standard. And the preliminary grade is one single entry to provide a letter grade to communicate to students about their overall progress in the class.

Because I grade the tasks using words rather than numbers, they should not automatically calculate into a student’s course grade. However, to be certain that tasks have no numeric value tied to a student’s grade, I make sure to weight the category to 0. This means that it will not count toward the student’s class average.

Additionally, when I grade a student’s mastery on a standard, the grade I enter is just 4, 3, 2, or 1. For example, a student can earn a 4 if they have mastered a standard. But because these are numeric values, the gradebook will also try to average these into the student’s course grade. I do not want to automatically average these numbers into their grade. If a student earned a level 3 on a standard, the gradebook will try to calculate that as a 3 out of 4 possible points or a 75%. This is not how I want it to calculate. So I make sure to also weight the standard category at 0 as well.

The only number I want to use in the grade is the “preliminary grade” assignment. I make sure to weigh this single assignment at 100%. A student’s term grade will solely come from this letter grade that I manually enter. 

Again, I have my standards based gradebook spreadsheet calculate the letter grade for me. The only thing I have to do is copy and paste the letter grade into the preliminary grade assignment in my online grading portal.

More ideas about standards based grading

How to move away from percentage grades to help improve student learning

Why you should use rubric grading to make your life as a teacher easy

5 simple tips to make grading for teachers easy

How does standards based grading work in a successful high school classroom

I absolutely love sharing my ideas about my standards based grading system and hope that you find my ideas helpful for your classroom! After reading this, if you feel you are ready to take the plunge into standards based grading in your high school classroom, sign up for my free guidebook to become an expert at standards based grading! I can’t wait to help you get your standards based gradebook all set up!